Chapter 1 — A Seed Planted

The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which … is smaller than all other seeds, but when it is full grown, it … becomes a tree.1

“Son, no matter where your life takes you, always remember that if you have eyes willing to see and ears willing to hear, you will come to find you are never traveling alone.” 

With that non sequitur, my paternal granddad—who we all called Papa—went to bed with a smile on his face.  

Was this his idea of a joke?  He tells me I’ll never be alone as he leaves me sitting there on his porch—alone—to finish the whiskey in my hand he just poured. 

Not likely. Papa was not the joking kind. 

But he was the kind of guy who liked dropping pearls of wisdom into the comparatively empty noggins of young kids like me. Thinking back now, it’s pretty safe to say he was probably counting on this particular pearl rattling around in there like a loose pebble, hoping it would plague my fifteen-year-old brain long after he was gone. Which, I must confess, it did.

Papa was good at doing things like that. As he left the porch that night, all I remember thinking was, What the heck is that supposed to mean?

Even then I was pretty sure it had something to do with the God Papa was always talking about. But I had no way of knowing that for me to arrive at a meaningful answer to my question would take thirty years of living and bring me to putting my arm around the shoulders of a young woman in court one day who at that moment seemed more like she wanted to die than live. 

* * *

The … seed … sown among the thorns, … is the man who hears the word, and the worry of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. 2 

1 Matthew 13:31-32

2 Matthew 13:22